Harlem Histories and Boardroom Lessons

This book traces the peak of the Jewish population in Harlem before World War I to stirrings of a revival today.CreditCreditNew York University Press

Nearly a century ago, during the Harlem Renaissance, the activist and writer James Weldon Johnson described his neighborhood as “a city within a city, the greatest Negro city in the world.” But he wondered, “Are the Negroes going to be able to hold Harlem?”

“When colored people do leave Harlem,” he wrote, “their homes, their churches, their investments and their businesses, it will be because the land has become so valuable that they can no longer afford to live on it.”

He was correct in predicting in 1925 that “the date of another move northward” — as when blacks had displaced Jews, long after Harlem had begun as a Dutch suburb — “is very far in the future.” Three new books explore Harlem’s evolution since then.

In “The Jews of Harlem: The Rise, Decline and Revival of a Jewish Community” (New York University Press, $35), Jeffrey S. Gurock, a professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University, traces the peak of the Jewish population there before World War I to stirrings of a revival today.

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This book argues that the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was not a distant, passing phase, but “a period that left indelible influence” on black culture and beyond.CreditPraeger

In “Harlem: The Crucible of Modern African American Culture” (Praeger, $48), Lionel C. Bascom, who teaches in the department of writing, linguistics and creative process at Western Connecticut State University, argues that the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s was not a distant, passing phase, but “a period that left indelible influence” on black culture and beyond.

Still, by the early 21st century, greater Harlem’s majority population was no longer black, as Johnson had foretold. What happened to the poorest tenants and small shopkeepers? Would the neighborhood lose its cultural cachet as its inhabitants were increasingly priced out?

In reviewing Kay S. Hymowitz’s “The New Brooklyn: What It Takes to Bring a City Back,” Alan Ehrenhalt, a senior editor at Governing magazine, agreed with the author recently that continuing urban decline makes everyone a loser. Gentrification can produce both losers and winners.

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This book explores Harlem’s resistance to renewal as it becomes the home to destination restaurants and $3 million townhouses.CreditHarvard University Press

In “The Roots of Urban Renaissance: Gentrification and the Struggle Over Harlem” (Harvard University Press, $39.95), Brian D. Goldstein, an assistant professor of architecture at the University of New Mexico, explores the neighborhood’s resistance to renewal as it becomes the home to destination restaurants like Red Rooster Harlem, a soon-to-open Whole Foods Market and $3 million townhouses.

“Community development, which had once stood for a radical, communitarian and collectivist ideal of the future city,” Professor Goldstein writes, “instead came to represent an image of Harlem as a place whose revitalization would proceed from its entrance into a so-called economic mainstream.”

A Future President Drops In

In “The Activist Director: Lessons From the Boardroom and the Future of the Corporation” (Columbia Business School, $27.95), the high-powered lawyer Ira M. Millstein describes New York City’s mid-1970s fiscal crisis as “among the worst examples of poor corporate governance oversight I have seen.”

He writes that he was one of three confidants of Mayor Abraham D. Beame whom Gov. Hugh L. Carey enlisted to persuade Mr. Beame to resign (they refused out of loyalty to the mayor), and reveals the bizarre back story behind the mayor’s coveted endorsement of Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Mr. Millstein and Howard J. Rubenstein brought Mr. Carter to Gracie Mansion, but the mayor refused to see him. “Howard begged him to, and he finally agreed to come down to the meeting,” Mr. Millstein recalled, but just sat there, his hands folded in front of him, listening to Mr. Carter’s entreaties, and then returning upstairs without saying a word.

A Bookshelf column last Sunday about several new books that explore the history of Harlem misstated the title of a book by Brian D. Goldstein. It is “The Roots of Urban Renaissance: Gentrification and the Struggle Over Harlem,” not the “The Roots of Renaissance: Gentrification and the Struggle Over Harlem.”

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